The editorial, which was posted online Tuesday night, follows comments Trump made which some interpreted as a call for violence against Hillary Clinton.

Trump said at a campaign event in North Carolina on Tuesday, "Hillary wants to abolish - essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."

"Donald Trump must end his campaign for the White House in a reckoning with his own madness, while praying that nothing comes of his musing about an assassination of Hillary Clinton," the paper wrote.

"Trump can offer no apology sufficient to make up for insidiously making light of murder. Nor can he explain away or justify planting a notion that could spur a demented follower to kill a political rival, a President or Supreme Court justices."

The paper called on Republicans to "dump Trump" if the GOP nominee declines to drop out of the race.

Donald Trump must end his campaign for the White House in a reckoning with his own madness, while praying that nothing comes of his musing about an assassination of Hillary Clinton.

In the event that Trump fails to abandon his candidacy — as he seems determined to — the Republican Party, including vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, must instead abandon Trump for toying with political bloodshed.

Trump hurtled past offensiveness into dangerous recklessness on Tuesday by suggesting violence as a means to prevent Clinton from nominating U.S. Supreme Court justices.

At a rally in North Carolina, Trump leveled a standard accusation that Clinton intends to essentially repeal the Second Amendment by naming justices who would eviscerate the right to purchase and own firearms.

Then, referring to gun owners, he said: “By the way, and if she gets the pick — if she gets the pick of her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I dunno.”

Trump can offer no apology sufficient to make up for insidiously making light of murder. Nor can he explain away or justify planting a notion that could spur a demented follower to kill a political rival, a President or Supreme Court justices.

Predictably, his campaign claimed that he “was obviously talking about American voters who are passionate about their Second Amendment rights and advocating they use that power at the ballot box.”

Which is not at all what he said.

Since the Democratic convention, Trump’s offensiveness, ignorance and instability have repulsed Americans, including Republicans, in increasing numbers. Leading GOP national security experts have deemed him unfit to serve as commander in chief.

With notable exceptions, Republican officials have stayed uneasily with Trump while disowning his words and actions. Now, he has left them no choice but to dump Trump.

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